.1 




'Xi 

r 




Jefferson Davis 

and 

Repudiation in Mississippi 



JEFFERSON DAVIS 

AND 

REPUDIATION IN MISSISSIPPI 



JEFFERSON DAVIS 



.AND 



REPUDIATION IN MISSISSIPPI 



BY 
JOHN DOUGLASS VAN HORNE 



1915 



Copyright, 1915 

By 

John Douglass Van Horne 



'ci.A4is;nt» 



JAN -4 1916 



PREFACE. 

Probably a good proportion of those who will receive this 
paper know more than the writer knows about his subject. 
Yet the more they know the more hopeful is he that they 
will approve his aim, even if they do not feel called upon 
to applaud his performance. 

Though a complete review of repudiation in Mississippi 
would have thrown a clearer light upon certain matters 
that are here barely indicated, such an undertaking would, 
on the other hand, have defeated the purpose of brief 
recital. And perhaps, after all, a full record of the move- 
ment is more essential to an analysis of Mr. Davis's opinions 
or of his presumed motives than to an understanding of the 
main facts concerning his attitude toward repudiation. 

Glyndon, Maryland, 
December, 1915. 



Jefferson Davis 

and 

Repudiation in Mississippi 

"Before Jefferson Davis took his place among the arch- 
traitors in our annals he had already long been known as 
one of the chief repudiators ; it was not unnatural that to 
dishonesty towards the creditors of the public he should 
afterwards add treachery towards the public itself." So 
says Theodore Roosevelt in his work on Thomas Hart 
Benton. Apparently this mention of Jefferson Davis as a 
chief repudiator must relate to his alleged concern in the 
repudiation of certain obligations of the State of Missis- 
sippi ; for he resided in that State from the time when he 
quit military life, and politically, if exception is not made 
of his service in the Cabinet of Franklin Pierce, he was a 
representative of Mississippi alone until he was chosen as 
President of the Confederate States. 

But so far as repudiation in Mississippi was a legislative 
act he could not have taken a direct part in it, because he 
was never a member of the Mississippi Legislature. Nor 
could he officially have instigated or approved an act of 
repudiation in Mississippi, because he never held civil office 
of any kind in the State government. 1 So, if he was a chief 
repudiator, he must have worked for repudiation through 
an influence of notable strength which yet was not derived 
from holding office in the State. How did he acquire this 
influence? 

From 1828 (the year of his graduation from West Point) 
to 1835 he served in the United States Arm}-. In 1835 he 
resigned from the army, and his resignation was soon fol- 
lowed by his first marriage. In the same year he became 



8 

a cotton planter in Mississippi. After his wife's death in 
September, 1835, he traveled outside the State until the 
spring of 1838, when he returned and devoted himself to 
care of his plantation and to study. 2 From this time until 
1843 he lived in a seclusion so close that it has been par- 
ticularly noted by most of his biographers, some of whom 
have even likened him in this period to a hermit. 3 He 
seldom went beyond the immediate neighborhood of his 
home, and it seems that he indulged in intimacy with no 
one except his brother Joseph, who lived on an adjoining 
plantation. His extreme retirement forbids the supposition 
that he had then the influence of a leader in any popular 
movement. Probably his opinions were unknown to the 
public and had only the weight of opinions expressed by 
an intelligent man in uncommonly restricted private inter- 
course. It was in 1843, when he was an unsuccessful can- 
didate for the Legislature, that he first tried to enter public 
life. 4 

Two issues of bonds, known respectively as Union Bank 
bonds and as Planters' Bank bonds, were repudiated in Mis- 
sissippi. The movement against the Union Bank bonds 
took form in 1841, when in a message to the Legislature the 
Governor of the State recommended their repudiation. The 
Legislature then sitting refused to take such action, but in 
February, 1842, its successor "solemnly repudiated" the 
bonds. 7 ' This, of course, occurred before Mr. Davis's first 
venture into the political held, and no reason appears for 
belief that any act or opinion or wish of his had to do with 
the Legislature's declaration. About eleven years intervened 
before the Planters' Bank bonds were repudiated. If there 
is any evidence that connects Mr. Davis with the second 
repudiation, the writer has failed to find it. On the other 
hand, Mr. Davis recognized more than once the validity of 
the Planters' Bank bonds, and his own words have been 



quoted by a biographer to show his opinion that provision 
should be made for these bonds. 6 

The intent of the remark quoted at the beginning of this 
paper is to exhibit Mr. Davis as a leader in repudiation 
and as a chief of swindlers. 7 He seems to be barred from 
the eminence to which the historian Roosevelt would exalt 
him, but it may be well to inquire whether he was in sen- 
timent a repudiator — that is, whether he favored direct and 
final refusal to pay certain obligations of the State ; for 
such was the attitude of the repudiators in Mississippi, 
though, to be sure, they did not acknowledge that the Union 
Bank bonds constituted a valid debt of the State. 

One biographer, William E. Dodd, says that Mr. Davis, 
"in common with his Whig neighbors, had opposed his party 
on the repudiation of the Union Bank bonds, holding that 
they were State obligations whose value ought to be deter- 
mined by the courts. As the judiciary was then constituted, 
this was tantamount to saying that they should be paid." K 
Alluding to Mr. Davis's introduction as a candidate for 
Congress in 1845, Dr. Dodd says further: "To the surprise 
of the party leaders he openly announced his opposition to 
the Democratic attitude on repudiation, the one live local 
issue."" In the collection of lectures called "Southern 
Statesmen of the Old Regime," William P. Trent also says 
that in the canvass of 1845 Mr. Davis denounced repudia- 
tion, and that the "slanderous charge" that he favored it is 
a charge "still repeated, but on absolutely no grounds so 
far as I can see." 10 Another biographer (and a hostile 
one), Edward A. Pollard, dealing with Mr. Davis's first 
appearance in Congress, says: "His previous connection 
with the local politics of Mississippi could only have been 
of the slightest description. Almost from the commence- 
ment of his career he was on the theatre of national politics. 
This observation is interesting in view of the accusation 
which has become familiar in the Northern newspapers, 



10 

that Mr. Davis was an advocate of that odious measure, 
the repudiation of part of the State debt of Mississippi, 
represented by the bonds of one of her banks. The libel is 
contemptibly ignorant in point of narrative, the main fact 
being that at the time the bonds referred to were refused 
payment Mr. Davis was in the retirement we have 
described, having no connection whatever with politics, and 
the further fact having lately appeared that at a subsequent 
period he endeavored to raise voluntary subscriptions to pay 
these bonds, and thus redeem the honor of Mississippi." 11 
Still another biographer, William T. Walthall, says that 
Mr. Davis's "supposed sympathy with the advocates of the 
payment of the debt by the State was actually (though 
ineffectually) employed among the repudiators as an objec- 
tion to his election to Congress in 1845. " 12 

A statement of Mr. Davis himself is quoted by Walthall. 
On the day of the general election of 1843, in which Mr. 
Davis was defeated as a candidate of the Democrats for the 
Legislature, a debate was held between him and the well- 
known Whig orator, SeargeJmt S. Prentiss. Before the 
debate the two met in order to decide upon the questions 
to be discussed and to eliminate questions respecting which 
they did not differ. Among the subjects eliminated was 
repudiation, and it was left out because of agreement on the 
general principle that the State might create a debt and that 
the people were bound to pay a debt so created. Concern- 
ing the Union Rank bonds, already repudiated, there was 
a difference. Mr. Prentiss holding these bonds to be a debt 
of the State, while Mr. Davis, believing the bonds to have 
been issued unconstitutionally, considered the "question of 
debt or no debt" a question to be determined by the courts. 13 
By constitutional provision, as Mr. Davis knew and took 
pains to mention, suit might be brought against the State 
of Mississippi. 



11 

This debate was important to him, since in spite of defeat 
in the immediate election his ability as shown in the discus- 
sion was promptly recognized. But for the purpose of this 
paper the significance of the occasion lies in the public 
expression of his opinion respecting the Union Bank bonds. 
Though the general question of repudiation was excluded, 
the status and the fate of these bonds were too momentous 
to be ignored in the debate. In 1843 the Whigs vainly 
hoped to bring about a reversal of the Legislature's action, 
while in general the Democrats approved what had been 
done and vigorously opposed the attempt to undo it. It is 
clear that Mr. Davis's attitude was not the attitude of a 
repudiator, because, if he insisted that the bonds were 
illegal, he thought nevertheless that the question or ques- 
tions involved should be settled by the courts. The actual 
treatment of the bonds shows how inconsistent this was 
with the aim of the repudiators. The test contemplated by 
Mr. Davis was a suit against the State itself. The resolu- 
tion passed by the Legislature in 1842, while inviting pro- 
ceedings against the Union Bank and against any person 
or persons who might be liable through connection with it, 
denied obligation, legal or moral, on the part of the State. 
Nullification of the debt as a debt of the State was the 
essence of the resolution. 

The reality of the distinction just drawn is illustrated 
by one attack that was made upon Mr. Davis. In 1863 
Robert J. Walker found that Mr. Davis could not satis-^ic- 
torily be exhibited as a repudiator if he was sincere in his 
proposition to abide by a judicial settlement in the case of 
the Union Bank bonds. Yet to discredit him seemed neces- 
sary to Mr. Walker, who as a financial agent in Europe of 
the United States was interested in preventing a foreign 
loan to the Confederate States. By reason of intimate con- 
nection in the past with politics in Mississippi, Mr. Walker 
should have been familiar with the movement which culmi- 



12 

nated in the Legislature's resolution of 1842, but his letters 
published in London failed to show any participation by 
Mr. Davis in that movement. 14 Containing not the slightest 
evidence of anything done by Mr. Davis at the time of repu- 
diation, these letters dealt with what he said in 1849 when, 
representing Mississippi in the United States Senate, he felt 
called upon to speak for the people of the State in answer 
to foreign censure and to recite certain objections to the 
Union Bank bonds. Necessarily these objections were to 
a large extent identical with the objections advanced years 
before by the repudiators, who, however, as has been shown, 
were far from inviting the test that seemed logical and 
proper to Mr. Davis. But Mr. Walker sought to make it 
appear that the matter of the Union Bank bonds was judi- 
cially settled in 1842, and that "Jefferson Davis, notwith- 
standing his professed desire to submit this question to the 
final decree of the courts of the State, persisted, as we have 
seen, in 1849, in repudiating these bonds, at a period more 
than seven years after this decision of 1842, and still per- 
severed after the second similar adjudication of 1853." 
The "decision of 1842" was rendered in the case of Camp- 
hell ct al. vs. Mississippi Union Bank, 6 Howard, 625, 
where (as Mr. Walker neglected to inform the British 
public) the matter of contention was the bank's right to 
recover on a promissory note. Challenge of the bank's 
legal status led the court to examine a constitutional ques- 
tion which would also have arisen ( though not as the sole 
question ) in an action against the State to test the validity 
of the Union Bank bonds; hut of course the court did not 
apply its conclusions to any disputed indebtedness of the 
State, since no such controversy entered into the case. 
Indeed, the opinion contains this statement: "1 have thus 
examined the several pleas, and have endeavored to confine 
my remarks strictly to the questions presented by the record, 
with a view to avoid even an intimation of an opinion on 



13 

any question which is not directly raised." However sig- 
nificant this decision was as showing the court's attitude 
toward a capital question, it was by no means an adjudica- 
tion of the State's liability on the bonds, and therefore it 
was not the "final decree" which Mr. Walker himself repre- 
sented Mr. Davis as professing to desire. The final decree 
came much later (in State of Mississippi vs. Johnson, 3 
CusJwi.au, 755), and was in fact the adjudication of 1853 
mentioned by Mr. Walker, which with strange perversity 
Mr. Davis refused to honor some years before it was pro- 
nounced and even before the suit disposed of by it was 
brought; for, notwithstanding an apparent lapse of Mr. 
Walker's own memory, it should be kept in mind that he 
dealt with what was said in 1849, offering no proof of any- 
thing said or done later by Mr. Davis. 

The appearance on the scene of Mr. Davis in 1843 — 
largely accidental as it was and helped by no political ante- 
cedents — could not be expected to affect the fortunes of the 
repudiated bonds. If the prevailing temper could have been 
brought to favor submission of the dispute to the courts 
by way of final settlement, payment of the Union Bank 
bonds would no doubt have been reduced to a question of 
overcoming financial difficulties — that is, to a question of 
time, and repudiation in Mississippi might have received 
a complete check. 

In his monumental work on Mississippi J. F. H. Claiborne, 
whose life and Mr. Davis's were almost coextensive, says 
that Mr. Davis had never any connection with repudiation. 15 
The name of Jefferson Davis is not mentioned in the book 
"Nine Years of Democratic Rule in Mississippi," a con- 
temporary record in which severe attention is paid to the 
men prominently identified with the movement. 1 " "The idea 
of attaching any share of responsibility to him for the re- 
pudiation of the bonds was of later origin," says Major 



14 

Walthall. lint for his connection with later and quite dis- 
tinct events such a charge would probably not have been 
urged. In the writer's belief the charge, whenever made, 
cannot with truth be based upon any part taken by Mr. 
Davis in repudiation. 



NOTES. 

1 William T. Walthall, "Jefferson Davis," a biographical sketch in 
pamphlet form published by the New Orleans Times-Democrat, 1908. 

2 Not all authorities are in exact agreement as to the time of 
Mrs. D'avis's death or of Mr. Davis's return from his travels. But 
probably the statement in the text is close to the facts. 

3 Walthall, page 9; William E. Dodd. "Jefferson Davis" ("Ameri- 
can Crisis Biographies"), page 47; Edward A. Pollard, "Life of 
Jefferson Davis," etc., pages 18-19-20; William P. Trent, "Southern 
Statesmen of the Old Regime," page 266; "Autobiography of Jeffer- 
son Davis" in Belford's Magazine, January, 1890; Varina H. Davis, 
"Jefferson Davis, a Memoir." vol. I, chap. XVI; New International 
Eneyclofcrdia and (11th edition) Eneyelopcrdia Britanniea, biograph- 
ical articles on Jefferson Davis; Lowry and McCardle, "History of 
Mississippi," page 641. 

4 According to one biographer, who also makes note of Mr. 
Davis's period of seclusion, he was a delegate to the State conven- 
tion of the Democrats in the summer of 1843: Frank H. Alfriend, 
"Life of Jefferson Davis," page 24. 

5 "Mississippi, an Encyclopedic History," edited, etc., by Dunbar 
Rowland, article "ReDudiat'on Resolution." 

"Walthall, page 11; "Mississippi, an Encyclopedic History," 
article "Jefferson Davis." 

7 Theodore Roosevelt. "Thomas Hart Benton" ("American States- 
men Series"), pages 194-195. Here is the language immediately 
preceding the statement quoted in the text: "It is a painful and 
shameful page in our history; and every man connected with the 
repudiation of the States' debts ought, if remembered at all, to be 
remembered only with scorn and contempt. However, time has 
gradually shrouded from our sight both the names of the leaders 
in repudiation and the names of the victims whom they swindled. 
Two alone, one in each class, will alwavs be kept in mind." Mr. 
Roosevelt then names, in the first class, Jefferson Davis and, in the 
second class, the Rev. Sydney Smith, who seems to have suffered 
as a holder of Pennsylvania bonds. This classification of Mr. 
Davis has something like a precedent in a bald allusion to "Mis- 
sissippi bonds, repudiated, mainly, by Mr. Jefferson Davis" which 
is to be found in the autobiography of Winfield Scott. General 
Scott's state of mind is indicated by his mention of Mr. Davis as 
a "deadly enemy" : "Memoirs of Lieut.-General Scott, LL. D.," 
page 148 (note) and page 593. 

8 Dodd, page 64. 

; ' Dodd, pages 67-68. As to the Union Bank bonds the issue 
could have been "live" only in the sense that the Democrats were 
under fire because of the accomplished fact of repudiation. 

10 Trent, page 275 and note. 

11 Pollard, page 22. 

12 Walthall, page 12. 

13 Walthall, pages 10-11. 

14 Letters of Robert J. Walker on Jefferson Davis, etc., published 
by Willhm Ridsway, London. 1863. 

15 J. F. H. Claiborne, "Mississippi," etc., Power and Barksdale, 
Jackson, Miss., 1880, page 423. 

,,; Published by Thomas Palmer, Jackson, Miss., 1847. The author 
is said to have been Dudley S. Jennings. 



J 






LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



111 II 1 ' Will 




013 707 303 1 9 



II! II III III II II llll II 

013 707 30 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



013 707 303 1 



penmalrffe* 



